Playing a Part – 15.5
Author: Wildbow

Playing a Part – 15.5 | Pale

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Verona went to knock, but stone didn’t carry sound, so she reached for her limited supply of glamour and dashed some on the wall, whispered, “Knock, knock,” and rapped her knuckles on the surface.

The sound boomed through the cave.

“Come in,” Guilherme said, his voice hollow and deep as it captured the acoustics.  “You don’t need to knock to enter.  You haven’t observed that nicety before, and it’s hardly as if you’ll stumble on me in an indecent state.”

“Is that because you’re a faerie or because you’re…?”

“You don’t need to speak of it as if it’s something crude.  I’m of the court of winter.”

Verona ventured inside.

It had been chilly on the walk over, down by the water to the cave.  It was colder now, inside.  Flakes of white dust floated in the air and captured sunlight, but without warmth.  Where light had been limited but sunny before it was neither of those things now.  The light reached further, exposing more of the cracks in the cave wall, broken weapons, and even the feathers from when some little girl had been turned into a bird.  Verona hadn’t been there to see, but she’d heard.  The shadows helped highlight the parts of the cave that had been in use for so long that grooves were worn in.  Footpaths, seats.

Even in the ruin of it all, there felt like there was an arrangement.  Like it was a set, a stage put together by a practiced hand to cultivate an emotional effect.

But if she looked at Guilherme, she knew it wasn’t staged.  He sat there, slightly hunched over, one arm resting on a knee, his other leg bent, flat against the ground.  The dust had settled into him and it looked like it had sunk into hair and skin, leeching out color.  Long dust-dappled brown hair hung down, and he didn’t push it away from his face.

He’d talked about her stumbling on him in an indecent state and this somehow felt indecent.

She rubbed at her palm, then pulled her hand away.

“The compass?” he asked.

The glass that had shattered in her palm.  She nodded.  “I guess I shouldn’t be rubbing at it, huh?  If attention reinforces glamour?”

“It doesn’t matter.  I am sorry, Verona Hayward.  I did give you a warning, but I’m sorry all the same.”

“It doesn’t matter?”

He shook his head.  “I could tell you, but perhaps you’d be happier if you didn’t know.”

“Wouldn’t I be way unhappier thinking there’s some reality I don’t know about?”

“Whatever some Faerie might pretend, you know yourself better than virtually any other being might be able to pretend.  Only you know.”

“Except I don’t know, because I don’t know what the information is.”

“That is also true.”

She felt a little weirded out, seeing him like this.

“Dude,” she said.

“Dude?”

“Do you ever move?”

“I haven’t had occasion to in a little while now,” he said.

“Just… shift position for me?” she asked.

He did.  He straightened, no longer slouching forward, moved his hand from his knee, and brought his other leg down, so he was almost sitting cross-legged.  As his leg moved, the pants and kilt he wore shifted, and cloth that had hardened through exposure to elements and dust cracked in places, more like it was made of stone than anything flexible.  In places where it bent, it made her think of some plastic toys that would lose color when bent back and forth.  Like the color was the first thing to go.

He leaned back against the cave wall, at an angle that was almost as offputting as that heavy slouch.  It was the way a man might lie back after a mortal gunshot wound to the gut, uncomfortable, unsustainable, uneven.  Sitting up more than sitting.  Dust rolled off him in a layer more than any dust she’d seen.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t thank me.  I’ll assume you’ve come for niceties, glamour, and answers.”

“That’s a little clinical.”

“I advise you take the glamour, take my advice that you shouldn’t want the answers, and I’ll forgive you any lack of niceties.”

“Come on, dude.  You’ve got to know me well enough that you know I can’t turn down nifty practice details.  I want answers.”

“You keep calling me dude.”

“I could call you other things until you tell me what I want to know.  Broseph.  Fella.  Guy.  Mister.  Hotshot.  Stud.  Gent.  Lad.  I want answers, chap.”

“The wound to your hand was glamour driven.”

“Okay,” she said.  “Just an illusion?”

“I put that together so you might better see what I see.  Then I forgot I’d made it.  The forgetting was a warning to me.  That I was transitioning between courts.  Some things transitioned before others.  Some flowed in, letting the summer ebb out, like waves lapping a shore, a back and forth that would change as the season did.”

“The glass was winter?”

“Yes.  And so is the wound.  Winter is a court of endings, of fate, of final verdicts.  It is less of an illusion, and more a descent into a delusional madness one has to live with for the rest of their lives.  If I’d known I wouldn’t have given you that glass.”

“What does that mean, though?  Fate?  Final verdict?”

“The wound may last, Verona Hayward.”

“Last like…?”

“For life.”

“Is there a cure or-?”

“No.  Not in the sense you mean it.”

“Just random pain and sometimes I try to hold stuff and my hand just freaks the fuck out?  Until…?”

“Yes.”

Verona’s eyes went wide.  She looked around.  “Bull.”

“This isn’t the sort of thing you can escape with denial.”

“Bull.  No, fuck that, no.  There’s gotta be-”

“There is no cure.  Just as practice may open doors, it can just as easily close them and bar all entry thereafter.”

“Fuck that!” Verona raised her voice.

It felt like she felt when screaming at her dad.  Frustration more than anger.  Knowing it wouldn’t matter.

The numbness ebbed, like he’d been talking about.  She didn’t like the feeling that settled in where the numbness had been.

Guilherme didn’t respond and didn’t move.

Verona rubbed at her palm.

“What do I do?”

“Endure.  Some are given everything from money to positions of power from the day they enter this world, and the small minded will laud them and pretend those elevated few have earned what they were so clearly given.”

“Well fuck them, I don’t care about them.”

“Others are given nothing but pain, struggle, or handicaps.  Sometimes all three. Sometimes they aren’t given the slightest chance from the beginning, entering the world without the ability to draw a breath or drum their heart.  They are unfairly condemned, or the hundreds of those who struggle are said to be the cost of the handful that get it all.”

Verona shook her head.  “I don’t need platitudes or speeches.”

“It’s the nature of platitudes to be wasted on those who’d best heed them.”

“That’s a fucking platitude too.  I want my hand fixed.  I want you- dude, I want you to wake up a little.  Give me something.  A bit of the old Guilherme, someone who can give me an answer, not a bullshit speech.”

He shifted position again, without being told to.  Dust fell from hair, and he blinked slowly as he sat straighter.

“Perhaps…?” he started.

“Yes?”

“Perhaps there’s a solution.  If the story is not done.”

“It’s very not done,” she told him.  “The glass broke while I was trying to stop Charles and Maricica.”

“Then perhaps the injury could take another direction, if that was a midpoint or two thirds of the way through a story, the ending still pending.  You’d want to heal or be ready to heal the injury as you brought the story to a conclusion.”

“But the-” she started.  She shook her head.  “We’re not in a position to stop them.”

“No,” Guilherme said.  “No, you’re not.  And I will stress the perhaps.  The odds are slim.  There is a very real chance that you’ll have to live with this injury for the remainder of your life.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “It’s something, maybe.  If the story is incomplete.  Even if we can’t do anything about Charles or Maricica.”  Yet.  Gotta keep our cover.

“Again, I point out, the chance is slim, I fear you’ll come to hate me if you try, somehow, and find the injury remains.”

“Nah, that’s- no.  Thanks.  It’s an answer, a way out, right?  Don’t say it a third time, okay?  It’s-

“A chance at an answer.  Slim, and not fully founded in fact, fae, or practice.”

She made a face, frustrated he’d gone and said it three times.  She clenched her uninjured hand, raising it a bit, then dropping it.

“What about the event?” she asked.

“I said you’d suffer an injury bad enough you would miss an important event.”

“I thought it would be that night, but I didn’t.  But I missed the first day of school.”

“Were there consequences from that missed event?”

“It feels like Lucy’s latched onto some others at school.  Like I don’t even belong there, in school, in class.  I wake up in the morning and my first thought is I’ll bail, I’ll handle practice stuff, like that’s the default.  Actually going is the thing I have to force myself to do.”

“That would suffice.”

“Then I don’t need to worry about that, at least?  The real trap was the injury, not the missed event?”

“I think it sounds like you need to worry about it more than you are, but yes.  The real trap seems to be the injury.”

Verona stood there in the cave, feeling the dust at her arms and shoulders.  Where tiny hairs stood out, the dust caught.  It felt like it should have tickled, but it didn’t.

“What can I do for you, Guilherme?” she asked.

“Nothing.  Where I sit now, it is fated, it is done.  I’ll keep my distance, so I don’t deliver any more inadvertent fates onto you three or the rest of the world.”

She shook her head a bit.

“A sword sits by the wall.  There is still sunlight in it.  If you smash it, it will break like glass.  Take a piece, grind it up.  There will be enough summer glamour in there for a week or two of conservative use.  Three or four days of your usual use.”

“You know me so well.”

“I expect I’ll get to know you better in coming months and years.  You were never a young lady of any inclination toward High Summer.  But Winter?  More so.  By the time we’ve exhausted that which remains of Summer Above, here, I hope to have educated you three well enough you’ll be able to deal with Winter’s cruelty.”

“I’ll get that in a bit?” Verona asked.  “Alpeana around?”

“She is.  Sleeping.”

“Cool,” Verona said.  She ventured deeper into the cave, past the point that harsher light reached.

Setting her bag down, she put out two of the eco-friendly water bottles, spirits inside, and a pair of rusty black nails she’d pulled out of some guy’s eyes in the Undercity.  A bogeyman, supposedly acting on his own, probably working with the Foreman as he tested his reach.

“Bit of spirit, bit of Abyss stuff.  Dunno if that helps.”

There was the sound of a yawn.  “Thank ye, lassie.  Every mickle make a muckle.”

“Good luck with stuff.”

“Aye.”

Verona stood carefully, so she wouldn’t bang her head on the sloping ceiling, then walked back, over to the sword.  “This one?”

When Guilherme didn’t respond, she looked back.  He was nodding, dust sloughing off him in grains finer than any sand and in snowy flakes, his eyes closed, dust on the lashes.

He was slouching forward again.  Like a man who badly, badly needed to get some sleep, but was fighting it.  Gravity seemed to pull him down.

She picked up the one-handed sword with two hands and, after carefully judging its weight and balance, brought it down with the flat of the blade striking a rock.

The blade broke at the middle, shards scattering.

She got a book out of her bag, put the broken blade-tip in between two pages, then carefully set about wrapping it in tape, to keep the book closed.

“Don’t want to jostle this,” she commented, doling out more tape.  “You going to be okay, G?”

“I’m going to be as I am.”

“I was reading up on the courts, and there’s older documents and records that suggest it wasn’t always seasonal courts,” she said, to fill the silence while she worked.  She didn’t want the blade to slide out and stab her or pierce her bag while she was working.  “Daniel apparently said something about that too?  That the courts were due for a change, and Maricica might be angling for something in the new system?”

She pulled out her school binder, which had her four sub-notebooks for school in it, unbuckled it, and put the book firmly inside before closing it up.  The other books and things would help keep it put, as would the protective encasement around the binder itself.

“I dunno if you’re happy like this, it sure doesn’t seem so, but what if you took the angle that the courts are going to change?  Like, hey, Winter is bullshit, this isn’t really an ending.  If it’s all glamour and glamour is belief,” she kept talking, trying to push stuff like her cat mask out of the way so she could slide the binder into place.  “Why not just believe hey, bull, this isn’t a life sentence, change with the courts!”

No response.

She looked back.  He was gone.  No longer sitting there.

She twisted around, looking-

And the light in the cave faded.

Guilherme stood there, a couple of feet behind her, looming as he looked down.  The dust ran down him more like water than anything airborne.

Alpeana was awake, about fifteen feet behind him, on all fours, her hair swirling around her, tense.

“Och, big guy,” Alpeana said, quiet.  Guilherme’s head turned a fraction.  “Go easy.”

He turned his focus back to Verona.

She let go of her bag and straightened, facing him.

“You will not disparage my court,” he said.

“It wasn’t my intention to-”

He raised a hand, and as it passed into more direct light she could see how near-white the skin was.  The movement stirred the air and that stirring more than anything else made her want to be quiet.

He drew in a breath, then exhaled.  “You cannot and will not belittle Winter, Verona Hayward.  I’d kill you if I had to, to stop you.”

Verona swallowed.

“Aye, big guy,” Alpeana said, voice very small compared to his, not because of emotion or because she was trying to be inoffensive.  But because he had far more presence.  “Easy.”

“Better I kill you than others come for you to silence and erase the words you’ve already spoken and the words you might speak.”

“Duly noted,” Verona replied, expression neutral.

“If your ideas about me would lead to errant words, the Wild Hunt would put all of us to their transparent swords.”

Verona nodded.

He exhaled, and the dust around them swirled.  She wanted to glance at it, and the patterns it made, but she also didn’t want to break eye contact.  She felt like if she did, he might act.

Alpeana inched forward.

Reaching an arm forward, straining forward as if she didn’t want to move her whole body any further forward than she absolutely had to, Alpeana took Verona’s wrist.  She tugged Verona off to the side.  Verona resisted, reaching down toward her bag, and Alpeana tugged harder, fierce, grabbed Verona with another hand, then pushed her toward the door with enough force that Verona stumbled a few steps.

Instead, Alpeana’s hair reached out, grabbing the strap, and dragged it along the floor with a heavy scuffing sound.

Guilherme remained standing there, back to the cave entrance, looking down at the sword she’d just broken and the space she’d just occupied.

Alpeana picked the bag up, then tossed it across the threshold, Alpeana standing in shadow, Verona in the daylight.

With a motion of her hand, Alpeana bid for Verona to go.

Verona looked back at Guilherme, still standing there, facing the spot where she’d been.

Verona looked at her dad, lying there in bed, not even looking at her as he waved for her to go away.

The television prattled on at a low volume, casting bright, saturated color into the otherwise dark room.  Her dad had the phone to his ear.

“Alma is on maternity leave while she takes care of her niece, putting even more on my plate,” her dad complained.  His cheeks were wet with tears.  “I’m at my limit.  I’m so tired.”

He waved again for her to go away.  She’d wanted to talk to him about going away for the weekend, but she’d found him on the phone.

She wasn’t sure if it was his brother, some retired coworker, the captive audience that were her Gram and Grandpa, some therapist or some anger management sponsor.

“I haven’t had sex in ten years.”

Verona made a face and turned to go.

“My daughter hates my guts,” he said, loud enough for her to hear.  “She’s given up on everything, including this family.”

Verona rolled her eyes.

She went into her room, got practice stuff out, and opened her battered laptop, checking in with the others.

Her dad’s sobbing and accompanying words could be heard through the wall.

She covered her ears.

When a couple minutes passed, she pulled them away, heard it again, and in frustration, turned on some music and cranked it up, drowning him out.

He pounded on the wall three times, and she ignored it.

Letting the music wash over her, distract, take her away from the scene.

The music throbbed and undulated, helping her to turn her brain off, helping her to fall into instinct.

She sat across Jeremy’s lap, for an extended make-out session.  The fingers of her injured hand were in his hair at the back of his head, the other hand at his shoulder.  They sat on a dusty old loveseat that was all a jumble of stuff that his aunt had asked his family to keep in storage, down in his basement.  The music filled the space.

Jeremy’s phone blinged with an incoming text, lighting up.  As he broke the kiss, she kissed his cheek, then moved to kissing his neck instead.

“My mom’s on her way home.  ETA, ten minutes.”

She nodded, tuning out reality, tasting skin.

“Want to wind it down?” he asked.  “If we don’t, I might be flushed and out of breath when she comes in.”

“Mm,” she responded.  She stopped, resting her cheek on his shoulder.  She closed her eyes, listening to the music.

“Cool,” he said.  “You okay?  We haven’t talked much.”

“I’m iffy.  This is nice,” she replied.  “You good?”

“Iffy too.  School’s grinding me down, you know?” he asked.  “The math class taking up all afternoon every afternoon for a few weeks really kind of…”

He searched for words.

“Sucked,” she volunteered.

“…made it clear how much school sucks, along with the other stuff,” he elaborated.  “I’m already pretty tired of stuff.”

“I’m way ahead of you there.”

“It was only tolerable because you, Wallace, and some of the others were there.  Amadeus left.  Not that I was great friends with Amadeus, but-”

“Most guys were sorta friends with him.  He had cool stuff.”

“Yeah.  But Wallace is going to be away, you’re… iffy?  It sucks because it feels like you’re iffy with me.”

“It’s not- no.  Us being friends with extra stuff is the best thing I’ve got going, pretty much,” she told him.  She started rubbing at her palm.

He took her hand and took over the massaging of it.  She flopped back, head resting on the armrest of the loveseat, her legs still across his lap.  Two hands massaging at once, no having to worry about tiring out her right hand with the constant movement of her thumb.  She closed her eyes.

“Can’t do this for long.  Unless you want me to explain you being here to my mom.”

Verona groaned, long and loud.  “Give me until we have five minutes left.”

“Okay,” he said.  He rested their hands on her leg, and moved a pinky finger left and right on her jeans while massaging her hand.

“I wonder what we could do so you’re not lonely,” she said.

“Hanging out more?” he asked.  “I know Lucy’s doing her thing with Mia some lunchtimes or afternoons.”

“Yeah.”

“If you’re free?  I know you’re dealing with stuff, but I feel like I see you around but I don’t actually see you.”

“It’s not you.  You’re great.  It’s… It’s a whole lot of shit, you know?” she asked.  “And I’m trying to do too many things and I’m doing a lot of them badly.  Including my friendship with you.  I’ve got the thing with Avery next weekend, so I’m adding even more onto it, y’know?”

Stop asking ‘you know?’, she thought to herself.

“Well, if you’re up for it, Wallace and I were thinking of having a video game tournament during lunch.  Maybe with some of the other guys.  You want to play with?  We’d be scrambling to get from school to someone’s house, it might mean dealing with Logan or the donkeys.  We’d probably only get a few rounds in each.  Round robin style or something.  It probably won’t pick up for real until Wallace gets back, and it’s a bit more of a middle school thing to do than a high school thing, so you might think it’s lame…”

“Nah.  Kiddish is good, brighten up the day,” she said.  “I haven’t seriously played many games since I last wore something with a unicorn on it.”

Jeremy snorted.  “Fourth grade?”

“Like, third.”

“I sorta remember.”

“Yeah.  You had longer hair for a while then,” she said, running a hand over his head.

He smiled.  “So did you.  I like this look, though.”

She smiled.

He looked like he was going to say something, then stopped.

“Wallace and Lucy are great together,” Jeremy said.  Which wasn’t the thing he’d been about to say.

“Yeah,” she said.  She withdrew her hand from the massage in progress, swung her feet to the ground, and stood.  “They’re good for each other.  I’m glad for them.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy replied.

She’d taken off her sweater because the basement was warm, leaving a short sleeved top on beneath, and now that they were done, she pulled the sweater back on.

“Stay in touch?” Jeremy asked.

“Yeah, for sure.  Let me know what sort of game you might be doing at lunch, I’ll look it up.  I might be busy sometimes, but that could be fun.  A bit of a break from the boredom of school?  I could make the time.”

“Maybe, uhhhh-” he sat back on the loveseat, shirt draped over one knee.  “Instead of doing some game we’re super into, where you’d be behind, we could do something like a whole bunch of retro and indie games.  Different couple of games every lunch?  Ones none of us have played, some so bad they’re legendary?”

“I’m down.”

“Gives me a chance to point out some of the stuff I get into talking about when I’m blathering on about some game or another and you’re trying not to let your eyes roll inward in your skull.”

“Nah,” she said.  She lightly kicked his leg.  “I like talking creative stuff.  Especially if it’s unfamiliar stuff.  Like Lucy and horror movies and her music.”

“Cool,” he said.

“Gonna go,” she said.  “See you?”

“For sure.”

She got her bag and headed out the side door of the basement.

Wallace and Lucy are great together.

Wallace and Lucy are great together.

Wallace and Lucy are great together.

She didn’t want to keep having that conversation, because she couldn’t help but feel like Jeremy was working his way to re-raising the topic of how maybe they’d be great together.

She left before things still unsaid could be voiced.

Verona hammered a blanket up against the wall of the cabin for the extra insulation.  She pulled her hand back as the hand gripping the nail acted up, and narrowly missed hammering her thumb in the process.

She put the nail in her mouth and then dropped the hammer, rubbing at her hand.

Tashlit hurried over.

“It’s okay,” Verona mumbled around the nail pinched between her lips.

Tashlit reached for Verona’s hand, and Verona shook her head.  “No.  Don’t waste healing.  It doesn’t help enough for what it costs.”

Tashlit dropped her hands.  Verona pulled the nail from her mouth.

“I’m thinking we could cut lines there.  Then you can raise or lower the flap,” Verona said.  “Depending on if you want the light from the window or lower temp.  We’ve got the space heater, dinky wood stove, insulation on four walls…”

Tashlit gave her a thumbs up, but the sustained eye contact conveyed concern.

“Anyway!” Verona exclaimed.  She got the hammer.  “Passable?”

Tashlit nodded.

“Cool.  I was going to say you want to be careful of carbon monoxide with the space heater but you don’t breathe, right?”

Tashlit nodded and shrugged.  She tapped one eye.

“Ah.  Might have other effects?  In high enough doses?”

Tashlit shrugged again, nodded, then made a wavy hand motion, put her hands about a half-foot apart, and tapped a smaller eye again.  The sign for Peckersnot.

“Yeah.  Don’t want our Pecker to suffocate.”

Tashlit nodded.

“Well, we’ll watch out.  I wanted to make sure you were set and that you’re loved before I leave.  Tomorrow will be busy.”

Tashlit nodded, then gave Verona’s shoulder a rub.

The music Tashlit had put on played.  Verona slipped out of the cabin, which was small enough that one wall needed only two down-stuffed blankets to cover the wall.

Verona thought about sitting down, but in the midst of the music, she couldn’t help but think of what hadn’t been said.

That Tashlit hadn’t given an answer.

If she stayed, would Tashlit tell her?  If she asked, Tashlit would probably say, now.

She didn’t want the answer because she had a sense of what it would be.

“I’ll see you later?  If you need anything, let me know, eh?  Peckersnot is working as my go-to guy and message runner, so use him.”

Tashlit nodded.

“I’ll probably do a little Undercity visit tomorrow and a big Undercity visit when I get back, make sure I haven’t lost track of anything important.  You can come with if you want.  I know it’s a bit of a bummer for you, but you know…”

Tashlit nodded.

“Okay,” Verona said.  She waved.

Leaving quickly so things unsaid couldn’t be voiced.

“Hey,” Verona’s mom said, hugging her.  “I will see you tomorrow?  For the afternoon and the drive back?”

Verona hugged back.  “What do you want to bet there’s car issues?  Or other delays?”

“I don’t want to bet anything.  I took the car into the shop and everything’s fine.  Insurance covered it, we’re good to go.”

“Uh huh,” Verona said.  “Maybe it’s me.  Maybe I’m cursed.”

She rubbed at her palm.

“You’re fine,” her mom said, kissing the top of her head.  “Think about what you might want to do tomorrow afternoon.”

“Can we make it so you come late afternoon?” Verona asked.  “Close to dinner?  Is that okay?”

“It’s okay.  Whatever you want to do.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with you, but Avery and I are setting some stuff up, and I’d hate to leave right in the middle of it.”

Verona didn’t feel like her mom believed her.

“It’s really fine,” her mom told her.

Verona didn’t feel like it was really fine.

Her mom walked over to her car, at the back of the property.  “Text me when you’re ready, give me thirty minutes notice, okay?”

Verona nodded.

“When you ducked away for a little while, was it- were things too awkward there?”

“You were fine.  If anyone was awkward it was us goofing off.”

“Okay.  Alright,” her mom said.  “You weren’t avoiding me?”

“No, gosh.  No.”

Verona didn’t feel like her mom believed her.

Her mom’s disappointment felt heavy in the air.

Even talking on video and on the phone semi-regularly didn’t really stop this from being a feeling that hung over the start of any time they spent together.  Which seemed to lead to a natural conclusion that they should spend way more time together but well, Avery needed her.

Doing a lot of things badly.

“Love you.  See you tomorrow,” she said, giving her mom the finger guns.  She joked, “We could get a whole day together when the car breaks down.”

Her mom didn’t smile or laugh.  “I don’t think that’ll happen.  I hope not.  Love you too, honey.”

A vague pall of disappointment hung over the farewell, as her mom pulled out of the driveway.  Verona waved, and her mom returned the wave.

Or maybe that was just her brain playing tricks on her.

Verona lay in Avery’s bed, staring up at the ceiling.

School, Guilherme, Undercity, her dad crying, David, Tashlit, her mom.

Scenes rolling through her head.  She could banish one but another would creep in.

She looked down the length of the bed to where Avery’s head was on the pillow, alarm clock a short distance away, the display reading 2:55am.

If she didn’t get sleep now she’d be useless tomorrow and important, delicate stuff happened tomorrow.

Her hand hurt and she didn’t want to agitate it too much or she’d wake Avery and they’d both be tired.

That moment with Jeremy jumped into her head and left her with a vague bad feeling of what the future held.

She tried to distract herself thinking of practice and then she started thinking about the Undercity and the fact she wasn’t there, and how bad stuff was happening there, like kids being made to work and the whole Family Man business.

Lucy’s there, she thought.  The local Others are there.

It helped, thinking that.

If she didn’t dwell on that and the worst case scenario.

Tomorrow.  Had to focus on tomorrow.  New city, new things, new practice.  She could strut her stuff.  If she didn’t lose so much sleep that she was a zombie.

Then her mom would pick her up and that disappointment- that might’ve been real and crushing and it could just as easily have been Verona’s brain messing with her.

She stared at the ceiling until the gloom and eye strain let patterns unfold against her eyes, and she tried to let imagination play with the patterns, tried to fall into it.

She thought of Tashlit, in the midst of it.

Quietly, carefully, she slipped out of the bed, stepping over the air mattress they hadn’t been able to inflate.

In the bathroom, she had a pee, washed her face, and then sat on the lid of the toilet, staring across at the mirror that spanned the one wall, above the counter, below the sinktop lights.  She had dark circles under her eyes.

Back home when things got like this she’d just use a connection block and slip out of the house.  Back home, if something happened, though, she’d have backup.  Others, Lucy, the connections she’d made.

Here, if she got in trouble wandering around in the dead of night, she’d just make things worse for Avery.  She’d possibly ruin things for Avery.  She had to be careful to not ruin things.

With nowhere to go, almost vibrating with the internal debates and doubts warring for a place in her mind’s eye, sitting on the lid of the toilet, she imagined she felt a bit like Guilherme did.  Sitting in his cave, his own sort of artificial light around him.

Did he think about that moment with Verona the way Verona thought about moments with Jeremy, wishing she’d thought of a better response?  Hyper-analyzing everything, worrying about giving the wrong impression?

Jeremy was the best part of it.

The counter in the bathroom was starkly divided into an Avery section and a Sheridan section.  Sheridan’s half was a mess of cosmetics she’d bought and barely dug into, some handtowels used to wipe up water and then left there, and a shirt.  Avery’s had big fat bottles of Bigfoot brand face wash, deodorant and very limited cosmetics, more space left clear.  Fingernail clippers lay off to the side, a single fingernail having escaped the cleanup after.  Verona picked it up and threw it out.  Her own toiletry bag was off to the side and she idly checked the contents.

Then she spent a while reading the bottles.  Trying to take her mind off stuff, as if she could maybe distract herself from everything and get to the point where she was tired enough to sleep that she could go straight from here to the bed and conk out.

She had to get up to read Sheridan’s, since they weren’t in reach.  Then, up, she found herself pacing.  Every scene she’d been dwelling on its own bearer of nervous energy.

Breathing harder, she sat down, and because she couldn’t sit back down on the lid of the toilet a second time, because she’d already been there, and she might end up here all night, she sat on the floor, her back to the wall of the shower stall.  She thought of the moment of weakness in front of Avery, the third time the hand cramps had got that bad, and that was its own source of restless energy.  She’d come to help, not to give Avery more stuff to worry about.

She wished she could feel more than this vague restlessness and dull, crushing sense of general doubt and worry.  It felt like if she could, then she could resolve some of these questions or put stuff to rest.

Phone.  She pulled it out of the pocket of her flannel sleeping pants.  Her alarm clock, among other things.

Not much battery.  That would be her deadline.

She looked up pictures, then went looking for more.  Some artists on Go Foto Yourself did hand drawings of cats.

Instinct made her want to send one to Jeremy, taking her as far as the text message screen.

The message Avery had had her send and Jeremy’s responses were still there.

She texted him.

Verona
you awake?

Jeremy the Lad
Coincidently yes

“I don’t believe you,” Verona whispered.  “I woke you up like a jackass, didn’t I?”

She didn’t send that.

Verona
can’t sleep

Jeremy the Lad
homesick?

Verona
no. hahaha

It felt weird to be typing out the laughter and sticking a laughing cat emoji on there when she wasn’t laughing in real life.  Did that qualify for gainsaying?

Verona
restless. want pics?

She felt nervous, and a bit bad for bothering him, but-

Jeremy the Lad
would love pix

She lifted up her shirt, took some quick pictures, then sent them, before she could second guess it.

She watched as the progress bar filled up.

Sent as of 3:11.

Verona watched as the time on her phone ticked over to 3:12.

Jeremy the Lad
I thought you meant pictures of the city or avery

Verona
shit.  sorry
didn’t think
thought the intention was clearer
it’s late

Jeremy the Lad
it’s ok!  don’t be sorry!

She shifted, restless.

His response came back.  A picture.  A cat with hair so gray it looked almost blue, with eyes the color of the sky.  Ridiculous in its regalness.

She leaned over, the side of her head resting against the wall.

Good answer.  A non answer.

Jeremy the Lad
you’re beautiful
do you want me to recipracate?

After a second thought, she added:

but delete it later
don’t show anyone else

Jeremy the Lad
of course

She sighed, staring at the phone, restlessness answered in part.

Like maybe, just maybe, he’d stick around more?  Postpone asking?

That was a shitty way to do this.

But she wanted him happy and she couldn’t give him what he wanted, so this was… it made her happy too.

A big fat band aid.

Jeremy the Lad
You’re beautiful

She smiled.

Jeremy the Lad
I’ll send cat pictures until you tell me to stop

Verona
I might never.  or I might fall asleep while you’re doing it

Jeremy the Lad
Good

She watched as the pictures came rolling in.  That light level of interplay and replying to his messages kept her alert enough she couldn’t let her mind wander back to the stuff it had been stuck on before.

Verona
Send me pictures of Sir?

Jeremy the Lad
I have some blurry ones where hes running around
and one vid thats ok

Verona
perfect

She looked at the pictures and in the daze of the sleep deprived, sitting on the hard bathroom floor with a faintly damp bath mat under her butt, she ruminated on how she loved Sir in a similar way to how she loved Lucy and Avery.

She wouldn’t do this again.  Sending the other pics.  It felt nice on levels but bad on others.  Like she’d rigged some sword of Damocles over her head and she was trusting a nice guy to be nice enough not to let it drop.  Which he wouldn’t.  But it was still a big freaking metaphorical sword over her head.

Was it weird if she wanted this to go bad?  If she hoped he’d turn out to be a secret jackass that would show people the pictures, just to blow things up and give her less to agonize over?

She played the fifty five second video of Jeremy and Melissa trying to get Sir to fetch a ball, hitting the play button to start it over from the beginning, memorizing the exact moment Jeremy’s voice cut off so she could hit the button sooner.  The process was hypnotic, repeated what felt like thirty times but was probably closer to fifteen or twenty.

As the daze of sleep deprivation began to become something a little more like actual sleepiness, she texted him goodnight and thank you.  Then she sorted herself out, rinsed her face again, rubbing at the back of her neck, and then turned out the lights before opening the door.

Back to the bed.

“Y’ok?” Avery mumbled.

“I guess.”

“Not your hand again?”

“Nah,” Verona replied.

But the mention of her hand made her aware her hand was twinging.

The clock read 3:49am.  She watched as it reached 4:13, the faint cramps and threats of cramps in her hand keeping her up even when the rest of her was finally ready to fall asleep.  She eased her way out of the bed, got the shirt she’d been wearing earlier in the day, and draped it over the display.  Blocking the view of the number.

When she finally drifted off, she had no idea if it was 4:30 or 6:30.

Verona did her best to stay still as Avery applied eyeliner.  She wondered if Avery was noticing the concealer that she’d used to cover up the bags under her eyes.

“There.  Set?” Avery asked.

“Set.”

“How am I?”

Verona checked.  She’d applied Avery’s eyeliner with the same magic pencil.  It was one of Avery’s treasures from the Garricks, protecting the eyes against smoke and dust, but at the cost of removing the ability to see color.  Not that they were in a very colorful space.

“All set, check,” Verona said.  She put her bag down on a table they’d dragged to one side.  The table was surrounded by a chalk circle: a semicircle on the floor, another on the wall, the two halves meeting for a bit of an odd shape.  The circle was meant to secure the stuff on the table against Others.  About half that stuff was their books and practice stuff, and half of it was random garbage they’d bought for summoning Lost.  A stuffed horse, lottery ticket, lemons, and a cheap chessboard were in the mix in there.

“Number one, Wrongdoer Ratko,” Avery announced, pacing along the one wall.  They were in a building that had once had a business in it, with a grid of floor to ceiling windows along the one wall.  A vast open space that they’d cleared of little bits of crap and swept.  Even with the sweeping, though, the concrete of the floor had a thin layer of plaster or concrete dust on it.  The drop ceiling had been removed, along with most of the wires, though the occasional one dangled.  No power, and no lights except what streamed in through the one window.

“Ratko the Wrongdoer who evades sight and Sight.  Check,” Verona replied.  “You’re prepped?”

“Geared, and I’ve got the notes, summoning details.  Circle is drawn.  Argumentative practice, binding focused.  It helps that they used the same style of binding for a lot of Lost, means we can unlock the binding in the same sort of way.”

“So…?” Verona asked.

“Done.”

“Check,” Verona said.

“You’ve got the perimeter handled?  Lines at the bounds of the room?” Avery asked.

Verona looked.  She’d done all down the base of the windows and the base of the three walls, working around the spot with the table for an extra bit of barrier.  “Check.”

“Emergency battle practice?”

“Part of my gear.”

“We talked about an emergency measure in case of disaster.”

“Oh!  I thought you meant for the other, more dangerous ones.”

“We don’t know if Ratko is dangerous.”

“Want me to rig it?”

Avery nodded.

“Snow!  Help out!” Verona called.

Snowdrop stood in the outside hallway.  She reached the door and stopped at the binding.

Avery touched her heart, then reached out.  “You have my right to pass.”

Snowdrop tested, then pushed through, stumbling on the other side.  Cherry remained on the far side, prodding at the barrier.

Verona passed some of the practice cards to Snowdrop.  “That’s about fifteen for each of us, so… maybe three paces, put one down.”

“I’d say to be careful because of differences in height but you guys aren’t far off from one another,” Avery said.

“I’ll take shorter steps,” Verona said.

She and Snowdrop went along the length of the room, Verona near the window, Snow by the far wall.  Verona put the cards down, and felt them suction to the surface.

“How many did you put down?” Verona called out to Snowdrop.

“Seven!” Snowdrop called out.

“I don’t know why I even ask,” Verona said.  She squinted and counted.

Six for Snowdrop, six for her.

“Turn to your right, take two paces…”

Snowdrop did.  Verona did as she’d instructed, as well.

“Turn to your right again…”

They turned.

“Place one at your feet… then walk down the room, putting one down every three paces.”

They carried on.

“And space out the rest of the three, right down the middle.”

“Emergency blow stuff up measures set?” Avery asked.

“Set,” Verona said, glancing over Snowdrop’s work.  “Good work, opossum.”

Snowdrop gave her the finger.

“Done, then?” Avery asked.  “No vague language with stuff this big.”

“Done.  Check.”

“I’ve got an emergency get the hell outta here practice rigged,” Avery said.  “But it means one of us, ideally me, has to get to that table, and if I have to flip it, we’re getting hucked straight onto a path.  You’d miss dinner with your mom.”

“Better than being dead or something.”

“True,” Avery said.

“So.  Escape route all set?  Go over everything.”

Avery touched the six wooden animal toys and figures, all old fashioned, painted wood, some with wheels meant to be pulled along on strings, others more like decorations for a house or children’s toys for young kids.  A duck, a badger, a rat, an ape, a parrot, and a squirrel.  All lined up on the far edge of the table.  Each had a paper beneath them with a page from a story.  “That’s the path entrance.”

“Which way do you flip it?”

“Either way, but all the toys have to hit the ground.  Ideally at the same time.”

“Sounds good.”

“If we end up there, best thing you should do is stay put and wait for me or wait for help,” Avery said.

“I’m not helpless.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “Well, it’s a puzzle path.  Seven lengths, each length has a different feel and aesthetic, punctuated by animals.  All the animals are going to a party.  If you can’t deal with an animal by the time you arrive, you might turn into that animal.  For good.  Or they kill you and mount you on the wall as a side activity for the party, turn you into a pinata, or decide today’s a fine day for a hunt and get their hunting gear and rifles, while you run.  Ideally.”

“I might become a Verona monkey?  Ape?”

“Yeah,” Avery said.  “So if you run into an issue, stay put.  No backtracking- you won’t get anywhere, and it changes things to be more negative and hostile.  Try too long and the animals will all turn into fancy little Lost murderers.”

“Right.”

“They’re only ‘animals’ in the sense of the theme.  Might be people in clothes that evoke the animal, could be people with animal masks, or t-shirts like Snow wears.  Could be there are literal animals.  Whatever they are, you change to match.  Anyway, if someone ends up on the Bound to the Party or if they don’t pick the animals carefully, for whatever language they use on the papers, the animals and their issues are random.  It’s chaos.”

“But with the right animals…”

“You know what to expect.  The squirrel will hide something away, the fox will try to fox you, trick you, in other words.  The badger will badger you, the ape will copy your actions, the parrot will repeat what you say, the rat will betray your confidence, the duck will try to escape, or duck out of the situation-”

“Which is problematic,” Verona finished.

“Time consuming.  Sucks but it was the easiest one to find.  I found five different wooden duck toys before I found a good badger.  We needed six and there weren’t any weasels or snipes.”

“That’s the way it goes.”

“You might have to contrive to get a situation to happen.  Like with the rat?”

“I’ll tell him about that time I was little and peed in the kiddie pool and ask him to keep it a secret.  He can betray my secret.”

“Sounds good.  Means you have to mostly shut up the badger, get the ape to stop copying you, get the parrot to not repeat you.”

“Hand over their mouth mid-sentence should work, pushing him over mid-action?”

“Yeah.  Sounds like you got it.  Leaving the fox and duck as the big potential wrinkles.”

“Can deal, I think.  So long as I can practice to avoid the duck getting away.  I don’t want to chase.  But yeah, I think I’m set there.  We shouldn’t need it, right?”

“Check, then,” Avery said, scrolling down on her phone.  “I won’t get into the boons.  Running that path is more about escaping a worst-case scenario situation here instead of actually getting any benefits.”

“I’ll pocket the tart.”

“Okay then.  Moving on.  We’ve got paper, pens, rope, water, bread, snacks…”

“Nobody needs snacks,” Snowdrop replied.

“…the means of starting fires, the means of putting out fires…”

“Both practice means and non-practice?” Verona asked.

“Yes and yes.  I should edit the list, give me a few seconds…” Avery replied.  “Check.”

“Sounds good.”

“Opossum securely in the hallway?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop left the room, bending down to pick up Cherrypop as she passed over the barrier.

“With firm instructions to get to the Lord of Thunder Bay or Kennet to ask for help if all hell breaks loose?” Avery asked.

“Heck no,” Snowdrop said.  “I want to watch you die horribly.”

“Ey!” Cherrypop called out.

“Check,” Avery said.  “And Cherrypop has instructions to keep Snowdrop awake and get to Kennet to tell people what happened if somehow Snowdrop can’t?”

“Umm!” Cherrypop replied.

“In exchange for mad props and goodies?” Verona asked.  “Nuggets, pictures you can have that Peckersnot wants, snacks…?”

“Yes!” Cherrypop called out.

“Swear it,” Avery said.  “That you’ll try to remember and you’ll do it.  No jokes.”

“Swear!” Cherrypop said.  She grinned as Snowdrop gave her a pat on the head.

“Check,” Avery said.  “That should be it.  You take your position.”

Verona backed up, climbing onto the table.  Protected by several layers, with a ton of practice stuff and various magic items ready to use.  She was careful not to disturb the animals.

“I should let you know,” Verona said.

“Huh?”

“I’m pretty tired.  I think I’m game for this, but I thought I should say, just in case.  If you have any doubts, maybe that tips things over the edge?”

Avery frowned.  “How tired?  Do you want to call it off?”

Verona shook her head.

“Just saying, we could call it quits.  I could pick up where you left off, on my own.”

“Heck no.”

“Are you sure?  We could go grab stupidly overdone burgers from this place Sheridan likes, watch a movie…”

“I want to get us to where we’re okay,” Verona answered.  “Let’s get you set up here.  Just, you know… I don’t know what my point was.  Maybe you could use the fact I’m tired to excuse the fact I don’t know what the point was.”

“Of you saying you’re tired.”

Verona nodded.

“If we end up having to pull the big escape ripcord, so to speak… I don’t want you dealing with the Bound to the Party if you’re not focused, Ronnie.  If it comes down to it and you end up there without me?  You were saying you could handle it.”

“I think I can.”

“Okay, well… can you not try?  Let me come to you.”

Verona thought for a second.

“You told me you’re not at your best, that’s fine.  Happens.  But you also weren’t sure what the point was.  To me, this feels like the point.  I don’t want you doing that without me.  I’d feel better if you agreed.”

“Okay,” Verona said.  “Agreed.”

“Thanks for telling me.  It’s good to know these things.”

“This feels like prep for bigger things we’re going to pull later on in life, right?” Verona asked.  “The big checklists.  Kind of like Alexander organizing the big practice for Jessica.”

“Before Shellie ruined it.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.  Good point.  It’s not just about bindings to seal the exits, or what we have with us.  It’s about us.”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  “That’s true, isn’t it?”

“I’m going to put that on the list for later.”

“Send me that later?  I’ll think on it later.”

Avery nodded.

Verona settled in, trying to stay alert.

They each had their jobs.  Avery’s job was to establish connections, and if they were going to treat dealing with Charles and Maricica as a big goal, like Alexander’s thing had been, then Avery’s job was to get people in the room and stop the Shellies from getting in there.

A lot of their ability to turn enemies into friends had come from Avery’s good nature, or it had sure helped.  Nicolette, Zed, Liberty, a bunch of others.

That was Avery’s task.

Verona’s task was to figure out the plan.  It had always been her thing to hang back and come up with the solutions, to work out the systems they were dealing with, and to sort out their available tools.

Whatever they did, the dark reality was that if they dealt with the Carmine Exile, they’d basically be killing Charles.  Verona wasn’t positive the others had grasped that yet.  Lucy was still mourning John, and it felt like Avery had talked about the contest like the fact that forcing a contest to happen with Charles weakened in any way would be more humane than going after him directly.

You talked about killing him like they killed the original Carmine was an emergency measure, if he got worse or did something even more unconscionable than killing John and accidentally creating the Choir.

But it’s fundamentally the same thing.

Either we contrive to force another Carmine Contest with all our chips on one candidate and Charles hobbled somehow, or we kill him.  Either way, the man dies, and it’s my job to figure out how.

And I’m okay with that, Verona thought.

I don’t care.  I wish I cared, but I don’t.

Everything she’d been doing fit into this.  Sorting out the Undercity meant she was close to Charles and his nexus, in a sense.  Not a relative sense, nor a strictly logical one.  That one day to get somewhere was a constant snarl.

Maybe if we could assert some claim using the shrines and other stuff we talked about yesterday?

“Ratko the Wrongdoer,” Avery proclaimed.  As she talked, she set items in smaller circles around the edge of the diagram.  A glass that alcohol might be served in, a lottery ticket, a mouse in a mousetrap, turned so the trap was on top, contained in a ziploc bag because that was gross, a pipe that Avery lit and then turned so the top was flat against the floor, and an old shoe they’d torn the sole from.

“Ratko the Wrongdoer,” Avery proclaimed.

The process of removing the sole from the old shoe had actually taken longer than much of the binding they’d put on the floor of this room.  They’d had to tear it without cutting it, making it a pretty complicated process with a well made piece of footwear.

“Ratko the Wrongdoer.  Lost denizen of paths, a long time bound.  I hereby release you from a binding set by Ronald Garrick the Second.  I bid you be summoned and-”

There was a dark shadow, timed as Verona blinked and was just opening her eyes but hadn’t yet refocused.

Then a clatter, a violent rustling.

The circle in the middle of the room had blown out.  Chalk streaked the section of the floor they’d painstakingly cleaned as if each little particle had been dragged across the concrete surface in a straight line.  The shoe had been kicked and went flying.

Verona turned her head.  She could see him in the very edge of her vision, and she could hear the rapidfire footsteps, along with a moan and a rushed burst of words she couldn’t understand.

“What went wrong?” Verona asked.

“I think the rules he operates by were stronger than our binding!”

Verona turned again.

There was a strangled shriek, and another rapidfire series of footsteps.

“Ratko!  We only want to talk!” Avery called out.  “Verona!  Don’t try to look at him!”

Verona went still, dropping her eyes.

Avery’s eyes became opossum ones, irises gone, with dark circles taking up much of the orb instead.

Ratko panted audibly from the other end of the room.  He muttered something that might’ve been ‘suckin’ sin’ or ‘sook in sin’.

Verona, careful not to look at the man, looked down at the floor.  She could see where the footsteps had cut past the faint layer of the dust and grit they hadn’t been able to sweep up.  Pushed by the broom and unclaimed by the shitty dustpan, it had been fine and evenly distributed, but it looked like he had fallen, pushing the dust into lines and clumps roughly shaped like a human body.  Footsteps and handprints did much the same thing.

“We only want to talk,” Avery said, gentle.

Ratko replied in a language that definitely wasn’t English.

“Hmmmmm!” Avery said, glancing at Verona.  “That’s not supposed to happen.”

“Did that binding say anything about translation?”

“No,” Avery said.  “The first bit of the book said all Others should be automatically translated to the summoner’s language, if the binding and subsequent summoning of a bound Other was done to certain standards.  Which this supposedly was.”

“Supposedly, maybe.  Apparently, no,” Verona replied.  “What language is that?”

“Russian, I think?” Avery asked.  “Russian-ish?”

“He’s going down!” Snowdrop called out.

They both turned to look, uselessly.  They caught only a glimpse of Ratko’s foot disappearing into the ceiling.

Verona hopped down from the table, but didn’t cross the perimeter of the diagram they’d done around the room.

“What happens if he goes up?” Avery asked, running over to where he’d gone up and looking through the ceiling.  “Shoot.  There’s a duct.”

“Magic circles and diagrams technically extend all the way up and all the way down from where they’re at-”

“So he can’t go beyond it, if he goes up?”

“-but something like the shape of the room and different shaped spaces up there might fuzz it up, up there.  Weaker boundary, if there’s zero point of reference and no clear connection to what we did down here.”

“Crap!  I don’t want to release him into the world if he’s dangerous.  I’m going up.”

“Do you want me up there?”

Avery thought.  “Go up the stairs?  Keep an- watch out.”

“Yeah.”

“Snow!” Avery called out.  “If there’s any sign he’s out, get in here.  Stand watch here, keep an eye on our stuff.”

“Nah!”

Verona left the room, while Avery jumped up to the duct and wormed her way in.

Verona jogged up the stairs, looking around.  The space upstairs was more open, and might have been a call center once, but the desks and most of the dividers were removed.  Because it was open, she was able to see him at the edge of the room, in the corner of her vision.

As she turned her head, she could hear his footsteps speed up.  He was accompanied by the strained sound of exertion that came with running faster.

He disappeared behind a divider and his momentum sent him crashing into another divider, knocking it over.  He shrieked.

“Ratko!” Avery called out.  She emerged from the duct at the wall.  “We want to talk!”

He shouted something in Russian.

“Got any translation power?  You had the eye thing!”

“There’s some Lost stuff for that, but I don’t have it prepped!”

Verona pulled out her phone.  She fumbled through it.

Ratko the Wrongdoer shouted something.

“We want to talk,” Verona said.

She let the website digest the sentence, watched the words appear, watched it process-

She held up the phone as it sounded out the translation in Russian.

Ratko asked a question.  He panted for breath.

Verona, huffing from her run up the stairs, walked over carefully, phone up.  “Say again.”

The phone repeated the word.

He repeated the question.

The phone picked it up.

“Trap me?”

“We want to release you,” Avery said.  She sat with her back to a wall, to Ratko, while Verona faced the divider that separated her and him.

“We want to release you,” Verona said, to be clearer for the phone.  “But we need to make sure you won’t hurt anyone.”

She made a correction to the transcribing of her voice, then let the phone recite the translation.

“The whole ‘wrongdoer’ nickname is a little worrying,” Avery said.

“We’ll skip that.”

“We can’t really use him if communicating is this hard,” Avery said.

“He’s a klutz too,” Verona said.  “It’s not that he evades attention.  It’s like he’s forced off to the side, and just slams and stumbles through crap.”

“Snow!” Avery called out.  “We need first aid!”

“Then get it yourself!” Snowdrop called up from downstairs.

“He’ll have to patch himself up.”

He said a single word.

“Repeat,” the phone said.

Verona played the voice again.  She leaned over enough to look at Avery, holding a finger to her lips.

Talking over the relatively quiet phone made it too hard to hear, apparently.

He said something fairly lengthy.

“I won’t hurt anyone,” the phone recited.

“We need you to keep to the laws of man as much as possible,” Avery said.

“Yep,” Verona said.  “And we need to get to the summoning of some of these other guys before we’re out of time.”

“We’ll keep to the checklist.  Let’s wrap this up fast.”

“Snowdrop in position?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop gave them the finger.

“Check!” Verona replied.

“Cherrypop awake and ready to be our backup?”

“Aaaa!” Cherrypop roared.  Snowdrop joined in.

“Check!”

“Physical and mental condition more or less the same?  Tired?”

“Bit more tired after running after that guy.  Battery on my phone ran down some.”

“Noted.  Anything else?”

“Nope.”

“I’m well.  Snow is well, Cherry is well,” Avery reported.

“Check!” Verona declared.

“And escape routes up and down are blocked as best as we could do on short notice.”

“Check and done.  Ready to start.”

“Sootsleeves, who emerged from the womb with a torch in hand!” Avery called out, walking around the freshly drawn circle.  She set down a torch Verona had done the legwork for, struck a match, and lit it.

“Sootsleeves, who emerged from the womb with the horse she’d ride forevermore, never to dismount!”  She put the stuffed horse in the attached circle.

Poor freaking mom.

“Sootsleeves, who emerged from the womb with her kingdom, castle and citizen all!”

“I break the binding set by Chester Garrick, and bring you into a binding set by us!” Avery called out.  “Bought fairly by Avery Kelly.  I call you here!”

Dust plumed from the ceiling, quickly turning black.

The eyeliner let them see through it.  It also made it hard to see the exact colors of the woman astride the horse that reared up within the circle, front hooves kicking.  The horse didn’t stop rearing.

Circle’s too small for a horse, whoops.

The woman astride the horse looked like a queen, but the particulars were all shabby and improvised.  A crown of silverware, a complicated raiment and gown in what Verona presumed were bright colors- made of rags and trash.

She still held a torch.  She still carried a spear with a tattered banner attached to it.  For all that she was dressed in garbage and things, the look on her face was intense.

“We’d release you,” Avery said.  “If you’d agree to certain oaths.”

“Me and kingdom both?” Queen Sootsleeves asked.

“I was under the impression you and your kingdom are inseparable.”

The woman raised her chin.  She looked annoyed her horse couldn’t go back to a regular standing position.  “What oaths?”

“To abide by the law here.  If you won’t help us with our task, we’d have to ask you to leave this area.”

“I am my own kingdom, the ground I tread on is mine.  Where is ‘here’?”

Avery glanced at Verona.

“Um,” Verona spoke up, calling over.  The queen turned to look at her.  “Will your kingdom adopt our laws?”

“You’d be free,” Avery said.  “More or less.  We’d also cooperate.  But you can’t go invading or taking over, you can’t cause problems.  Just… find a nice spot, set up, do your thing.  It’s gotta be better, right?”

“We’ve slept so long the dust can be measured in handspans.  If you’d free my people, you’d have my gratitude, and my agreement, my torch, my sword.  For one task.”

“Cool beans,” Avery said.

“Make it three?” Verona asked.

The woman looked at her, eyes narrowing.

“She’s with me,” Avery said.

“Then I’m with her, it seems,” Queen Sootsleeves said.  “Three, I’m to follow your laws and lend you assistance?”

Avery nodded.  “Sure.  And after, you find some place away from civilization.  For your own good, and so you don’t cause anyone we know any trouble.  If you have any goodwill, you’ll stick to the laws even after.  Generally.”

“We’ll negotiate that at the conclusion of our deal,” the Queen told Avery.

“If I can’t come to any agreement for your requests or you can’t agree to mine, will we agree to a compromise where you return to the paths?”

“The paths?”

“It was called the Dream, incorrectly, before.”

“That is what I know it as.  Yes.”

They sorted out the nitty gritty details, including behavior in the Lord of Thunder Bay’s domain.

Avery broke the circle the Queen and her horse were in.  The horse finally set hooves down on the ground, breathing hard.

“Sorry,” Avery murmured.

“Don’t be.  We’re free.”

“Will you undo the binding around this space?” the Queen asked, as the horse trotted over to the window.  She looked out at the city.

“Verona?” Avery asked.

“Are you asking me to do it or are you asking if there’s a reason not to do it?”

“The second one.”

“I think we’re clear.  She is her kingdom, her kingdom is bound by the same deal?”

“Yes,” the Queen said.

“We’re clear.”

“Snow?” Avery asked.

Snowdrop dragged a foot hard against the chalk across the doorway.

The power left the area, and the whiteness of the chalk became a little less stark.

The Queen rapped the base of her spear against the ground.

And they came.

The reflection in the window shifted as the lighting changed.  There was something there, like a wall of heavy stone blocks was being reflected in it, but the wall wasn’t in evidence in reality.

They came through the two doors into the room.  Mice and rats carrying flags.  Children in rags.  Men and women with heavy bandages, smelling of something herbal that did a bad job of covering up the smell of flesh that seemed to be rotting alive.  Many carried torches.  Most were smudged black, like they’d been playing in a pile of coal.

Snowdrop hurried in and went to Avery’s side, to get clear of the crowd.  Cherrypop cheered.  Avery put her hands on Snowdrop’s shoulders.

As the number of subjects increased, Avery brought Snowdrop over to the table they’d have to flip over to escape this situation and reach a path.

“Going to have to be subtle.  This much would be a lot,” Verona reported.

“Sootsleeves never won a war in her crusade across the Dreaming.  Her soldiers are cowards and weaklings,” Avery murmured.  “And she’s not a good tactician.”

“But she did okay before the fighting?”

“They should be okay spies and stuff,” Avery said.

The Queen nodded, surveying the gathered subjects.  “More above and below?”

“Throughout the building and the surrounding grounds.”

“We need to not alert our enemies,” Avery called out.

“Yes,” the Queen said.  “Put aside your banners and torches.  Our kingdom was made to sleep within Dream and our awakening was bought by this witch.  We’ll do her a service.  We’ve agreed to stake no claim to this territory, we won’t set down roots.  We serve, a kingdom on the move, until a later day.”

The subjects stared at her.

“But we’ll need to adapt,” Queen Sootsleeves declared, before throwing down her torch with unnecessary force.

The torch flared bright, blinding Verona momentarily.  The eyeliner didn’t help with light.

The Queen sat within a fancy old car.  Her subjects were still rats, but the children were now dressed in modern rags, at least.  Sootsleeves herself was meant to look dirty and shabby, but it really looked like hipster chic with a hipster car, scratched sunglasses included.

“Keep the numbers down?” Avery asked.  “If you send a thousand mice and a hundred kids to go spy on these people, virtually anyone would catch on.”

“Yes.  Only a few will go at once.  Only… you.  We’ll send others when you tire.”

She indicated the group of about ten people and eighty mice and rats who had come in through the door and moved over to the right.

“You’ll spread out through the city, we’ll give you the directions,” the Queen said.  “The rest shall go back, tend to our kingdom.”

They outlined who they were after, and the rules to stick to to avoid alerting people about connections.

A bunch of urchins and rodents with human intelligence fanned out to various parts of the city, to keep an eye on their targets.

“Cleanup time?” Avery asked.

“I was actually going to ask, Mrs. Sootsleeves?” Verona asked.

“Yes?” the woman asked, adjusting the rear view mirror, lifting up her sunglasses.

“How are you getting down from here?  This is the second floor.”

The woman adjusted the gearshift.  “I’m the poorest Queen of all, but I was given three things when I was born.”

“A torch,” Avery said.

“Fire in hand and breast.”

“A kingdom,” Avery said.

“Loyal to the last, despite my failings and lack of wealth.”

“And your steed.”

“Unfaltering.”  The woman stroked the steering wheel, then stomped on the gas.  She peeled out in the contained room, turned the wheel hard, and turned the car around.  To face the window.  “Would you be so kind as to remove the lines in the way?”

“Of the window?  That’s uh, not ours, not us who’ll be paying the repair.”

“Then open it wide.”

“These windows don’t open.”

The Queen frowned, raising the sunglasses and eyebrows both.

“Sorry, just the facts.  If you can make your steed a car, could you make it, like, a pony?  To get through the door?”

“But-”

“No.  Better I ride through this glass than this stone, yes?”

“Yeah,” Verona said.  She hurried forward, using the broom to wipe away the simple chalk border they’d done around the edges of the room.

Avery frowned at Verona.

“Thank you.  Now I wait,” Queen Sootsleeves said.  “Until nobody will be looking clearly in this direction.”

Thirty seconds passed.

“You might not realize it but there are a lot of people in cities these days,” Avery said.

The woman stared out the window, hands on the wheel.

“Might be a long, long time before someone isn’t looking.  And we’re a bit short on time.”

Verona snickered.

“Are you laughing at me or with me, witch?” Queen Sootsleeves asked.

“With.  I do love practice.  This is fun.”

“Yes.  Fun.  After all, if one can’t enjoy a ride-”

The woman shifted gears and hit the gas.  Tires squealed while seeking traction.  Little papers were kicked up into the air.

“-what could even be called fun?”

The engine roared, and the car moved with surprising speed for how old it appeared.  Through the second story window, shattering not only that glass, but jarring the metal framing around the panes enough that it cracked the window to the right as well.  Sootsleeves and her steed soared over the fence bounding in the abandoned commercial property, onto the road below.  It sounded like a car crash, metal squealing and scraping like she’d landed atop another car, but after a moment, she resumed driving, peeling away, her steed intact.

“That was so awful, she’s the lamest!  You’re an idiot, summoning her!” Snowdrop complained.  Cherrypop’s inarticulate protests and disagreement were drowned out by the opossum’s excitement.

“Clean up?” Verona asked.  She held out the broom.  “Snow?”

Avery nodded.

“So awful, no style,” Snowdrop said.

Papers scattered, chalk lines with tire tracks through them, and more.

“Whoever comes to look at what happened here is going to have a story to tell, at least,” Verona remarked.  “The skidmarks.”

“Ughhh,” Avery groaned.

They could hear the tires squealing in the distance.

“I think we just unleashed a monster,” Avery said, as she took the broom from Snowdrop, who was still too excited to actually do any sweeping.

“Terrible,” Snowdrop said.

“Love it,” Verona said, bumping fists with the opossum.

“There once was a girl who set us free…
The name of that girl was miss Kelly…”

“To unbind you we’d need to get you to agree to deals.  Ideally, we want help.”

“The binding cut, a song was freed…
The girl’s aims were not for war nor greed…
She sought a deal, an assistance pact…
Bind word and song into a verbal contract…”

Avery sighed.

Verona piped up, filling in the gap.  “Tell us you won’t hurt anyone.  That you’ll try to stick to the local laws.  That you’ll respect the local Lord and take up no residence.”

“As far as we see there’s no cause to fight…
We’re well obligated to do what’s right…
We’ll do as asked, except for noise disturb’d…
The Lord is right, and we’ll stay curbed…”

“Ohhhhh, this car’s got a belt, we’ll belt out our song…”

“You’re into a chorus,” Verona said.

“Got a roar, we’ll roar all night long…”

Cherrypop clapped out of tune with the music, rocking side to side.  Snowdrop danced, holding Cherrypop atop her head so she wouldn’t fall off.

“It’s badly tuned, a tune we’ll wail…
We’ve got our pipes, healthy and hale…
Four in all, one more in the tail…”

Cherrypop laughed.

“Okay, okay,” Avery said.  “Just…”

Verona quickly scribbled down a contract, with the provisos and instructions on what to do. She passed it to Avery.

They were already repeating the chorus.

“…we’ve got our pipes, healthy and hale…
Four in all, one more in the tail…”

Avery passed the paper through the slight gap in the top of the window of the old beater.  A silhouette of a man took hold of it and took it inside.

“It’s badly tuned, a tune we’ll wail…”

The paper came back, oil stained and crumpled.  A smudge of oil at the bottom end resembled a signature.  She wasn’t sure if it was blood or oil, because she was colorblind.

“Go.  Don’t stick around any place too long.  Just drive by, get a sense of their location, come back to me.”

The car backfired, and even considering the large space, it was a lot of noxious smoke.  Verona found herself wishing they hadn’t covered up the window.  It didn’t bother Verona’s eyes, but it bothered.

Which led her to hurry over, pulling it down.  It helped the smoke escape.  She could see the headlights below.  The car had moved down.

The song faded in volume.  They were yodeling now, which was usually a way to help the transition to something different.

Avery walked over, looking down at the car as it steered its way around and away.

“So?” Verona asked.  “We’re getting faster at this.  Nice that they were able to just go straight down without driving through the window again.”

“I thought the song and singing might be good,” Avery said.

Verona gave her friend a pat on the shoulder.

“That’s two.  We can do three,” Avery said.  “Bit of a squeeze, timewise, for the last one.”

“I told my mom to pick me up late, close to dinner.”

“Oh, good,” Avery said.  “I mean, not good for her, but good.”

“Yeah, well… we should pick a third one who isn’t stuck in a car.  Or… car tethered?  Whatever ”

“Don’t have any more of those anyway.”

“What do you have?”

He was too squat, head too round, eyes spaced far apart, mouth too wide, with dense hair sticking up every which way, cut to even lengths, in a way that made it look more like he had fur instead of hair atop his head.  With seasons changing and a new coat growing in.  Head, shoulders, hips, and waist were all about the same breadth across.

He looked like a bad drawing of a child that had been brought to life and then converted into reality, the details made as much like the drawing as they could be while still being human.  He wore a toga-like tunic made of paper over white long underwear, sandals with torn paper straps, fake cardboard wings and a coathanger halo with sticks glued to it.

“It would help us out a lot, Tearaway Kid,” Avery said.

“But I don’t have to?” the kid asked, voice deep enough it hit lower bounds and croaked a little.

“No.  But we’re running out of time to get this sorted,” Avery said.  “I want my friend here while I check on the Others we’re unbinding.”

“It’s a good task,” the Tearaway Kid said.  “Good.  Do you have, uh, don’t know what you’d call her.  She rides a very big bird.”

“No.  I don’t think so,” Avery said.

“Because they got her around the same time they got me.”

“Might be they’re still summoning and using her,” Verona said.

“You want my help?  I want her free.  No, heck,” the Tearaway Kid croaked.  “Just find her.”

“I don’t want you causing the family trouble.  The people alive today aren’t the ones who bound you, I’m pretty sure.”

“Get me the details… maybe help me find and free her.  More help you give me, more help I give you.  For now, just tell me you’ll try some.”

“Girl with a big bird?”

“Massive bird.  Small city on its back.  I had to dress up to romance her,” the Tearaway Kid said, patting the paper toga he was wearing.”

“An angel?” Avery asked.

“A guy’s gotta try, you know?  Even if it means being a little over the top.  She liked it.  Called me a goofball.  She was a beauty.  About my size, laughed a lot.  Loved flying.  Lived for it.  She had a joy to her that made everything better, even secondhand.”

“That sounds so nice,” Avery said.

“What’s the catch?” Verona asked.  Avery elbowed her.

“No catch.  Except if you’re as big as her favorite bird is, the people flying through nothingness can stick to you.  They got her, I tried to help, they got me.”

“I’m not sure we could release her out here, if that bird is that big,” Avery said.

“No need.  We’ll go back.  To the Dream.”

“Nomenclature changed,” Verona noted.

The Tearaway Kid looked up at her, annoyed.  “Again?”

Verona shrugged.

“I want to pick up where we left off.  Before we were so rudely interrupted.  What do you need?  Tell me what I can do.”

“There are a few targets,” Avery said.  “Depends on how comfortable you are in your ability-”

“I’m comfortable.  I’m good at this.  What’s the hardest nut to crack?”

“Okay, well…” Avery paused.  “I’d say Thea, but I don’t think your abilities really match up well against her.  She’s too solitary.  Whatever you did, as you approached, she’d go on the offensive.  Or ignore you.”

“Hugh?” Verona asked  “I know you were postponing him.”

“What’s the angle?”

“Binders, sealers, goblin exterminators,” Avery said.  “Family, they aren’t really doing much business, they might be traitors.”

“I’ll get started.  Tell me more while I work.  I’ll need scissors and paper.”

Avery outlined the Lordship scenario, Hugh’s position in it, and the general shape of Hugh’s family and business.

“Okay,” the Tearaway Kid said, drawing a tie on the paper.  “Glue, paper, tape?”

“I’ve got a stapler,” Avery said.  “Oh wait, probably a bad idea.  Magic item.  Um.”

“I’ve got stuff,” Verona told them.  “Glad I brought art stuff.”

The Tearaway Kid smiled ear to ear as he saw the things.  He worked with the paper on the ground, on hands and knees, scribbling and drawing, picking up pencil crayons and markers.  He left a lot uncapped in his hurry, and Verona started re-capping them, just a bit annoyed.

“There,” he said.  “Now… I need to get changed.”

“We can give you privacy,” Avery said.

“I’ve got long johns on,” the kid croaked.  “But I need this perimeter disabled.  It’s too confining, it’s keeping me from doing what I need to.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “You agree to the deal as outlined?”

“Yep.”

Verona nodded her agreement, then nodded to Snowdrop.

Snowdrop scuffed the barrier.

“You’ll-” the Tearway Kid told them.  Before the light blinded them and the anthem blasted out.

Verona saw infinity multiplied by infinity.  Shapes took hold in the midst of it, wings unfolding multiplicatively, each wing feathered by a thousand wings identical to the parent, each visible in full clarity.  At the center a vaguely human form stretched out to full size, reaching the far corners of the universe, within the mouth of a beast that Verona knew had inspired the shape and manner of all kinds of animal, before they’d been made somehow less.

The image distorted.  Wings disappeared, but the rest remained.

It distorted again, and it was the Tearaway Kid, magnified to infinity, surrounded by blazing wheels with wings at the rim, eyes staring outward.  Larger than galaxies yet somehow present, contained within this room, a doorway to everything, he fumbled around at the back of his head.

The image cut out.  The Tearaway Kid threw his coat hanger halo to the floor, to join the wings and the toga.

“Whooooooly shit,” Avery whispered.

“Bird rider liked it,” Tearaway Kid croaked.  He pulled the other outfit over his head.  Paper taped to paper, lines and colors scribbled in incompletely.

He stood straighter, five foot ten, hair slightly messy, eyes bewildered, wearing an expensive suit, tie, and watch.

“This isn’t as impressive, but it’ll do,” he croaked.  He adjusted the tie.  His voice was clearer, normal, as he said, “It’ll do.”

“I’m still… that thing we just saw-”

“Focus, girls!” he said, “gosh!  If I approach these men as a client, what do I need to tell them?”

Avery shook her head.  “I’m not exactly sure.”

“I know,” Verona said.  “See her?”

She pointed at Cherrypop.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t mention the color, but… think for five seconds about buying this place.  Somehow.”

The Tearaway Client frowned, nodding.  “Okay, thought about it, but I have no money.”

“That’s fine.  Are you following me?”

“Are you confused?”

“Yes,” the Tearaway Client said.

“Well, I hereby refer you to Hugh Legendre.  You can go to him, you say you were in a place you thought about buying.  You saw a small humanoid thing and you were very confused.  The name Hugh Legendre came up.”

The Tearaway Client smiled ear to ear.

“Is that enough?” Avery asked.  “That’s thin.”

“I work with thin,” the Tearaway Kid said.  “How badly can I hurt them?”

“Until you figure out they’re up to no good?  Not at all.”

“Kidnapping?  I can leave one bound and gagged in a closet.  Once I have a good look at them, I can make a good costume.”

“You’ll want to be careful of a man named Florin Pesch.  He watches out for body thieves, dopplegangers, parasites, and I guess disguise artists like you.”

“There aren’t many like me.  I’m good at what I do.  Let me go, I’ll get back to you.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “That girl, her name is Bird Rider?”

“I don’t know her name.”

Verona groaned.  “Dude, come on.  I’m not an expert in anything relationships wise, but seriously?  Not even her name?”

“She had a bird with a city on its back, I was dressed up as a being of infinite glory, we flew together for a long time.  She gave me a kiss on the nose.  What use words?”

“At least knowing her name!?” Verona exclaimed.

“It didn’t come up!”

“You-!”

“It sounds lovely,” Avery interrupted, pushing a hand in the direction of Verona’s face. “Very romantic.”

Verona rubbed her palm, shaking her head.

“Leave it to me,” the Tearaway Client said.

“Let’s go,” Avery said.  “We don’t have a ton of time before you go, but let’s at least make sure Thunder Bay isn’t on fire or something.”

“I really hope it is,” Snowdrop said, from the sidelines.  Cherrypop, lying astride her head, nodded vigorously.

Verona massaged her palm as she and Avery fast-walked down the road.  She checked her bracelet to make sure they weren’t being watched or tracked.

Sootsleeves was parked by the side of the road, by a meter she hadn’t put money into.  Fast food wrappers sat in the passenger seat.  She winked at them as they approached.

“Having fun?” Avery asked.

“My subjects have word.  Not far from here.  You’ll want to be careful.  She’s alert.  She saw two mice in too short a span of time and I had to pull them away before she got suspicious.”

“Did she already do something incriminating?” Avery asked.

“Yes and no,” Queen Sootsleeves replied.  “Nothing against Thunder Bay, like you asked about.  But she has a group of children with her, and she intends to spirit them away.”

“Spirit-”

“Kidnap.  Ferry them to another realm.  To be consumed, perhaps, or be used for their power, or her own amusement.  Her intentions are not good.”

Verona and Avery exchanged looks.

“I’ll keep watch, for acts against this territory, or acts in support of this territory’s enemy, as you asked for my first favor to you.  Would you like to use a second?  To help stop her?”

“We’ll- we’ll get back to you on that,” Avery said.  “Ronnie?”

“I’ll cancel with my mom.”

Next Chapter